In "Brave New World," by Aldous Huxley, the dead are cremated. We are told this at the beginning of Chapter 5. Henry and Lenina are out flying in the night when she notices the smoke stacks of the Slough Crematorium.

She asks him why they have balcony-like structures around them. He tells her that they are meant for recovering phosphorous from the dead bodies. Each adult body has around 1.5 kg of phosphorous in it and the state would not want to waste the resource.

This is a way of showing how little value people have for the state in the book.